it was intended to be very “loosy-goosy,” where we would all make decisions together like a commune; it turns out that doesn’t work very well …

Ha ha – great – the pinnacle of free thought, the one place stuffed with all the right people, who, if only everybody were half as Jesus as them, would turn the world into paradise, needs Dear Leader to add a little Stalin because “it turns out that it doesn’t work very well”.

Since PZ Meyers was involved from the start, “Free Thought Blogs” was certain to resemble other places that define temselves negatively via the absence of something else loosely defined. These are war machines; they usually decay due to internal strife.

Mature criticism implies self-criticism, which is suicide in circles that pretend to be especially critical. Skeptics see self-criticism as treason. Thunderfoot’s mistake was to point out that the “Free Thought Blogs” are Group Think Blogs:

As such I personally see ‘freethoughtblogs’ as unrepresentative of the wider rationalist community in:

1) The disproportionate amount of attention it gives to sexism compared to other issues.

2) The way that those who disagree on the matter of sexism are attacked with a disproportionate amount of strawmen, invective and branding (misogynist, MRA, etc etc). This is a behavior more in line with bullying than free thought... and this puts FTB on a trajectory to be more of a fringe group that is intolerant of non-conformity, than a haven for free thought. (Emphasis added)

Funny how he is surprised about bullying and strawmen arguments on a skeptics’ site. Anyway, he mentions two aspects you cannot freely discuss in such “free” places:

1) That “free” presupposes conformity; you are free to do whatever only if there is no danger of you doing anything. Freedom is either a mere doctrine or follows the substitution of constraints by more efficient, systematic mechanisms.

Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. Julian Assange

2) Sex, sexism, boobies, whatever: Elevator gate was far from the end of the new atheist crowd going at each other.

They claim that it is their fight against the religious and the sexism inherent in traditional power structures that makes endless debates inevitable. But why not racism instead?

The FTB crowd is homogeneous - racially, politically, culturally, … . Skeptics are Whites plus a few token browns. There is only one big difference left: Penis or no penis. They just can’t stop tearing each other up over what many leave behind with puberty. But why?

One could mention “affirmative action” back firing, but featuring mediocre females prominently because they draw readers happens everywhere. Females utilizing sex, stuff like “science cheerleaders” and “skepchicks”, is as usual as defending this against criticism with sexism charges. But few communities are bogged down in sexism debates like the new atheists.

It is simple perhaps: The new atheism and skeptics movement is all about convenient bashing and the quick feel good that follows such. Skepticism sells sells because “yeah, f’ them, this feels good, I belong to the winners.”

Sexism charges are convenient weapons that fit the usual strategies of skeptics. They love kicking babies and having the minions high five in the comment sections. Semi-intellectual stabs at easy targets is what they do. Charitable reading and understanding of your opponent does not sell. They do what they are used to do, also to get ahead inside their own community. Accusing each other of sexism reminds of closet gays bashing homos. Repressed sexism boiling over alternating with the over-compensation characteristic of religious hypocrisy and liberal guilt.

Greg Laden

The funniest about the recent affair on FTB has got to be that they kicked out Greg Laden. Greg played the “look, I am really a feminist woman inside” game like few others. He was one of the best and became overconfident, kicking around people like Thunderfoot for their “sexism”, telling people in no uncertain terms that he, Greg Laden, is on the high priest level with PZ and Ed (and a few women he always mentions in order to mention women, as if they would ever tolerate a woman in such positions). And now he is as surprised as so many revolutionaries getting hung as reactionaries by their comrades.

Comments

Fair enough, Sascha. Now apply some of the same acerbic criticism to your good physicist friend on scienceblogs.de, Dr. Martin Bäker, a craven panderer to feminist political correctness and linguistic "affirmative action", always ready to jump to the head of the parade and stomp on dissidents.

Using Wissenschaftlerin (i.e., the feminine form) as the default generic for "scientist"??! Crazy times a billion? You bet, but Martin is gung-ho for it, and woe betide the fool who loves the German language too much to fall in line with such bullshit. A modern Robin Hood and champion of womankind he is, that Dr. Bäker... a knight in shining armor!

My having endorsed Martin in the past is not support for German-history-guilt driven token-feminism or the reality of fields being the end of physics. It is just that compared to the Florians there, he is relatively ... ah fuck it - you are right!

Speaking of German, Peter Sloterdijk sums up freefromthoughtblogs perfectly (though he wrote this well before most of them knew what the internet was) -

"How much truth is contained in something can be best determined by making it thoroughly laughable and then watching to see how much joking around it can take. For truth is a matter that can withstand mockery, that is freshened by any ironic gesture directed at it. Whatever cannot withstand satire is false."

That FfTB is in a perpetual toddler's tantrum fit says everything. Without inviting a debate on their merits, it is very difficult (but not impossible) to mock Richard Dawkins or the late Christopher Hitchens. On the other hand, mocking PZ Myers is like falling off a toilet. The former would shrug it off or laugh along. The latter is running out of blood vessels to burst.

Franc Hoggle, Dawkins is very easy to parody, but attempting to parody Hitchens would have been pointless.

The reason is obvious when you think about it: Dawkins takes himself extremely seriously and tries to make it as difficult as possible to disagree. South Park had a field day mocking his pompous arrogance. Hitchens only took himself semi-seriously and would have been mortified to learn that someone agreed with everything he said.

Mister (you are a white man, aren't you) throwaway, Vongehr is a hit-and-miss writer. This time he nailed it. The holier-than-thou espousal of feminism, the championing of the oppressed, the defense of global climate against catastrophic man-made change [Vongehr has yet to wise up on this particular point], the soapboxing to promote racial "minorities" [but where?], all these are forms of posturing employed overwhelmingly by privileged white men, to gain a leg up over their rivals in the daily rat race and to camouflage themselves much as a hyena will roll around in rhinoceros shit to stay safe from larger predators.

You know this very well, throwaway. I am not prepared to charitably extend the benefit of the doubt to you as Vongehr does. (There is a 5% chance that you are one of the "minorities" benefiting from some form of affirmative action -- a few of Science 2.0's bloggers are representatives of that species -- but I doubt it.)

"1) That “free” presupposes conformity; you are free to do whatever only if there is no danger of you doing anything non-conform. Freedom is either a forced doctrine or the substitution of artificial constraints by more efficient, systematic, integrated mechanisms."

Come to Pharyngula and not conform all you want bub, this will be proved patently false.

"But why not racism instead?"

Good point. You should raise the issue of race and blog about it rather than moan about it not being covered elsewhere. Essentially this is a whine that the focus is too narrow. If there is any oppression of minorities of race who feel unwelcome it is not due to our not talking about it. If anyone has experienced racism at conventions in the past, then let them speak up. The same speaking up as those who have felt harassed, pushed aside, maligned vociferously and targeted because they have the audacity to speak up about the issue of unwanted advances and incidences of harassment have. Neither feel unwelcome because we're actually talking about issues of privilege on all fronts, but we didn't start this fucking battle specifically as targeting gender issues. That ball got rolling with the response to EG. We all want minorities and everyone to be well represented in the skeptic movement - don't we? Is that something we can agree on? You will not find any disagreement on the FTB side of things about that, so why do you have to dishonestly swipe at FTB as unaware or undaunted by the plights of underprivileged persons besides women?

You missed the point. Apart from that I discussed racism in as far as I can (your demand means you have not looked at my other articles), the point here is not that FTB "covered" sexism rather than other issues like racism. They do not so much cover sexism as they simply exploit it as one convenient means to fight internally.

We all want minorities and everyone to be well represented in the skeptic movement - don't we?

Who is "we"? I do not identify with "skeptics". Why do you assume that everybody on the internet who writes about science and seeks to further rational enlightenment is a believer of naive scientism or a "new atheist"?

They do not so much cover sexism as they simply exploit it as one convenient means to fight internally.

What a stretch of the imagination. Your ascribing motives for the discussions is presumptive. As someone who doesn't fetishize science I'm sure you have evidence that this claim is true?

Who is "we"? I do not identify with "skeptics". Why do you assume that everybody on the internet who writes about science and seeks to further rational enlightenment is a believer of naive scientism or a "new atheist"?

Mea culpa. You are not those things. Just exchange the words "skeptic movement" and "we" with "those who discount their own privilege" and "us" if you wish. Don't get blinded by your tunnel-vision!

"Motives" here means pre-meditated rather than rationalized functioning? Did I ascribe that or do you project your "intentional stance" onto me?

As someone who doesn't fetishize science I'm sure you have evidence that this claim is true?

Not sure I don't fetishize science. Evidence? None but my personal experience in the lefty-lesby anti-whatever and related scenes, all of which one has no problem discrediting. It is probably more the "progressives" and "skeptics" (especially those who bash crackpots with physics they themselves do not grasp, but those L. Krauss types, too) than the republicans who taught me that evidence is useless.

Don't get blinded by your tunnel-vision!

The blindspot is a small part of the visual field. How much larger is all that we should count to our blind spot and why? All that other humans perceive; in order to be good? All that future generations believe or an asumed enlightened and fair, benevolent AI understands? I guess I will just go on to ponder constructionism and simply not care to be called a fashist communist sociopath for it by all sides.

Look forward to hearing from you.

How nice. I hope it is sincere. I will just take it as sincere no matter what.

Quite a remarkable fishing expedition. Having gotten nowhere accusing Richard Dawkins of misogyny and rape apologetics, FfTB played the race card. BaU, just another day. This is the real reason for Myers/Brayton moving away from ScienceBlogs/Nat. Geo. It's not due to censorship, it's due to the risk of being held accountable for malicious gossip and unsubstantiated character slurring.

The same speaking up as those who have felt harassed, pushed aside, maligned vociferously and targeted because they have the audacity to speak up about the issue of unwanted advances and incidences of harassment have. Neither feel unwelcome because we're actually talking about issues of privilege on all fronts, but we didn't start this fucking battle specifically as targeting gender issues. That ball got rolling with the response to EG.

Wow! This is like someone murdering their parents and then throwing themselves on the mercy of the court on the grounds of being an orphan!

Recall that EG started with two women, Stef McGraw and Rose St. Clair politely disagreeing with Watson. In response, Watson called them "anti-woman", accused them of "validating misogyny", and so forth. Then, being aware that McGraw was attending a conference at which Watson was speaking, Watson during her talk accused McGraw from the podium of being "ignorant", "parroting misogynist thought", and said that people like her were preventing women from attending events.

And, if you care to look, you'll see that at least one of these two women who Watson maligned vociferously and targeted, is herself a rape victim.

And then there's ERV, who was stalked for many months, in fear for her life. The reaction on Pharyngula has been to call her a "gender traitor", of "not having a woman's thoughts", and she has been told to read certain documents to find out what women are supposed to think. People at FTB have tried to get her fired and thrown out of school, and PZ Myers is attempting to have her blackballed at conferences.

So, yes, FTB has been at the forefront of speaking about harassment: consistently harassing, pushing aside, maligning vociferously and targeting women who happen to disagree with them.

Sascha, I think that you are tarring all Gnus/Skeptics with the same brush and being more than a little unfair about it. The Skeptic movement is populated with all manner of people, some of them dogmatic, some of them not. It is all very well to sneer, but watching one's "spiritually" motivated friend reject "allopathic" medicine and die an agonising death from cancer ,while simultaneously blogging about it and publicising Hulda Clarke's books, gives a different perspective on the push back against pseudoscience and religion. It is very frustrating to witness the corrosive effect of religious indoctrination on the minds of people in one's own circle. What is so wrong about trying to change that without resorting to FTB tactics. I take exception to the notion (if this is what you are saying) that the overriding motivation of Gnu Atheists/Skeptics is to bash someone. It's usually a case of reacting to a society awash with anti-science, environmentally damaging pesudo-scientific fraud and bigoted religiosity. The faults that you highlight are things to be vigilant against and many skeptics are very aware of them, hence the ongoing spat. You are in danger of appearing to be smugly superior to everybody.

May I suggest "My Back Pages" by Bob Dylan? It jumps to mind every time I'm confronted with the hypocrisy of the free thinking elite...

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

I'd say the recent (hopefully ephemeral) focus on sexism in the skeptic circle reflects the same focus in the demographic from which the skeptics are drawn (educated, western, white, middle class, whatever). You see the exact same exchanges in any similarly composed group; certainly on every campus, and in non-profits, organizations, clubs, groups and especially in "movements." It hasn't got anything to do with skepticism, obviously.

The fracas very well could have been about racism or homophobia instead; or both, if a gay minority member had been insulted in an elevator. Those are similarly well rehearsed topics for everyone in that demographic.

There are ironies for everyone in this. The "skeptics" (on all sides of the exchange) jumped straight into their practiced political positions!